Aqueous fluids, such as water, usually contain metallic salts therein. Said metallic salts, when in solution in said aqueous fluids, are split out into cations and anions, which produce hardness in the water, said hardness causing a tendency to form scale and to corrode metallic piping such as galvanized iron piping and metallic containers through which the fluids flow or wherein the fluids are stored. In order to reduce the corrosive effect of hard water or aqueous fluids flowing through metallic piping or contained in tanks or cooling towers, etc., the only alternatives are either to render the piping or the containers corrosion resistant, or to reduce the corrosive action of the water. Although stainless steel may be used as a corrosion resistant material, this is often impractical or too costly. The removal of the metallic salts from the water, thus softening the water to avoid scale formation and corrosion, therefore, may be regarded as the preferred alternative.
Once the impurities are forced to go into a suspension, these impurities may be removed by purging the system by means of the use of a trap which can also be removed at will.
On the other hand, as it is well known, the issues of energy preservation and pollution are attracting considerable attention, especially in the oil and oil based fuel areas. Considering that the automobile is one of the main consumers of oil in the form of gasoline, a very significant energy preservation could be attained by improving the fuel combustion efficiency in internal combustion engines. Therefore, a great effort is being directed towards the obtention of a larger amount of mechanical work from the automobile engine for the same amount of fuel consumed. A desirable related result of a more efficient combustion is that the engine exhaust emissions are generally cleaner because the fuel is more completely burnt.
Several attempts have been made in the past in order to remove impurities from water or aqueous fluids, as well as in order to improve the combustion characteristics of fuels, but said attempts have been effected through two completely isolated paths of reseach, whereby, as far as applicant knows, these two separate problems have not been jointly attacked up to the present date with the aim of finding one single solution to both of them.
Therefore, in the case of water and aqueous fluids, many processes and devices for removing undesirable salts therefrom have been deviced, such as filters, ultrafiltration devices, reverse osmosis installations and the like, which are either inefficient or extremely costly, whereby the method that has gained more acceptance is the treatment of the water by means of certain chemical compounds which convert the undesirable metal salts into other less deleterious salts which do not produce hardness, as well as the treatment of the water by ion-exchange compounds such as zeolites, which produce a similar result. All of these processes, however, require a strict control of the feedwater and of the water treated thereby, and are relatively costly in their operation.
Other devices have been described for carrying out special treatments of aqueous fluids, such as the magnetic separation apparatus described and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,247,398 patented on Jan. 27, 1981 to Mohri. In this patent, Mohri describes the use of a ferromagnetic metal wool made of an amorphous metal alloy to attract iron powders and the like in order to remove them from water. The alloy used for the ferromagnetic wool, however, although comprising the elements of the alloy of the present invention, is intended for a completely different purpose, that is, for magnetically attracting iron particles suspended in the fluid, whereby it comprises a ferromagnetic metal such as iron, nickel or cobalt, in admixture with a metalloid to provide the amorphous characteristic of the alloy, and an additional metal may also be included. As the alloy of Mohri is intended for being ferromagnetic, however, it must contain a high proportion of said ferromagnetic metal of from at least 50% and relatively low proportions of the additional metal, of at most 15%, and this type of an alloy is unable to remove dissolved salts from a liquid or to improve the combustion efficiency of fuels, and indeed Mohri does not even suggest the possibility of using this alloy for such purposes, since the alloy of Mohri is intended to be used only as a ferromagnetic alloy. Therefore, there is no suggestion in U.S. Pat. No. 4,247,398 for using said alloy in the removal of dissolved salts or in the improvement of fuel efficiency, whereby the device of Mohri does not solve the above described problem.
In the case of fuels, also many efforts have been made in the past for improving the combustion characteristics of fuels. Said efforts include the process described in U.S. Pat. No. 1,376,180 to Wickersham, issued Apr. 26, 1921, which describes the application of electrostatic fields across the fuel as it flows to the combustion chamber; and the process described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,116,726 to Kwartz, issued Jan. 7, 1964, which describes the application of strong magnetic fields through the fuel; as well as other patents within the same line of creating electrostatic or magnetic fields to improve, in a manner still not well understood, the combustion characteristics of liquid fuels.
An effort along a different line of research is represented by U.S. Pat. No. 4,429,665 to Brown, issued Feb. 7, 1984, which describes for the first time the use of an alloy for contacting a liquid fuel therewith to improve the combustion characteristics thereof. The alloy of Brown, however, needs the inclusion of a highly priced metal, namely, silver, whereby the devices manufactured from said alloy may have a relatively high cost which does not compensate for he rather low improvement accomplished thereby, whereby these devices never gained any reasonable commercial success in the market, particularly considering that the preferred commercial embodiment of said device includes a layer of platinum at certain places, which renders the same still more costly.
Applicant is also aware of the existence of numerous different types of water treatment devices to reduce the hardness and the corrosive characteristics thereof, which are based on the use of a contact member made of lead containing alloys. The fact that all of these alloys contain lead as a component, however, represents a serious drawback considering the well known polluting and poisoning characteristics of said metal.